SHOOTING ON CHERRY LANE

Two years after the wife of a Flagler Beach police officer was shot, investigators can provide no solid answers

On July 20, 2012, Flagler Beach police officer Bobby MacDonald requested an ambulance over his police radio. He told dispatchers his wife, Kathy MacDonald, was injured in a fall.

A bullet hole, along with blood spatter, was found in this pillow in the MacDonald house, where Kathy MacDonald was shot in the head. (Flagler County Sheriff's Office)

He indicated that a non-emergency response was all that was needed — even though he knew Kathy had actually been shot in the head.

Twelve minutes passed. Paramedics met the officer and his wife in a rural Flagler County parking lot. Bobby MacDonald was outside his police vehicle talking on his cellphone when they arrived. Kathy was sitting inside. The paramedics had to ask him to unlock the car so they could examine Kathy.

Paramedics later told investigators Kathy was "covered in blood and both of her eyes were swollen shut."

As they examined her, Bobby MacDonald said he "found her this way. I think she fell." The paramedics couldn't find the wound. Several minutes later, Bobby MacDonald pointed to a spot above his wife's right eyebrow and said, "She got shot; I think she shot herself."

Kathy was moved into an ambulance. After the paramedics told her that she was alone with just them, she said: "My husband grabbed me from behind and shot me."

Bobby MacDonald soon became the only "person of interest" in an investigation into the shooting.

That was two years ago today and the case remains open. No one has been charged.

Kathy survived the shooting in the couple's home on Daytona North's Cherry Lane. She is now blind, often confused and lives in a Daytona Beach rehabilitation center.

Bobby MacDonald spent the final 18 months of his law enforcement career suspended with pay because of the suspicion that he was involved in the shooting. He retired earlier this year and moved out of state.

He has declined repeated News-Journal requests for an interview.

JUST MARRIED

Bobby and Kathy MacDonald had "been together" for about a year and a half but only married three months before the shooting.

Hundreds of pages of documents, photos, transcripts and videos, and cellphone records shed light on the investigation, the couple's home life and Bobby MacDonald's account of what happened the day his wife was shot.

An hour-and-a-half after Kathy was airlifted to the hospital, Flagler County sheriff's Sgt. Nate Flach, one of the initial investigators, asked Bobby about his relationship with Kathy. Bobby referred to it as "rocky here and there."

Later the same night he told sheriff's Detective Annie Conrad that Kathy is a "Jekyll and Hyde" when she drinks. "I just go lock myself in the bedroom," he said.

Bobby also told Conrad that his wife was friendless.

"She doesn't have any friends," he said. "That's what she was complaining about too."

Bobby said his wife was under a lot of stress and menopausal.

"I'd rather deal with a terrorist than some woman with menopause, but it depresses her," he told Flach.

Friends came forward for Kathy after she was shot, as did Bobby's daughter. They told investigators that Bobby was abusive and controlling, and the couple's living conditions were the stressors Kathy talked about.

On the day of the shooting, Kathy told Bobby's daughter, Marilyn Scott, that there hadn't been clean drinking water in the home for three days and that Bobby "was holding her prisoner in their home."

Scott sent a notarized fax to Detective Annie Conrad on Sept. 3, 2012, about the phone conversation she had with Kathy the day she was shot.

"She said she couldn't live like this anymore, that she was going to go to a women's shelter because Robert had all of their money," Scott wrote. "She didn't have anywhere else to turn. She couldn't go to the police, because he was the police."

Scott invited Kathy to come to Illinois after she said she "should just kill herself." Scott told her she would be safe in Illinois and that she didn't think Bobby would follow her. Kathy told Scott she "was going to call her job and quit and that she would call me back."

While cellphone records show Kathy immediately called the Oceanside Beach Bar & Grill in Flagler Beach, owners last month declined to say whether she called to quit her job.

"Kathy (Shaw) stated that she used to live at the Beach Village Apartments and that Kathryn (MacDonald) used to come pick her up for work," Miller reported. "Kathy stated that Robert used to sit across the street with binoculars and watch Kathryn to make sure she was picking her up like she said she was."

Bobby also had documented violent incidents with a former wife and a shaky law enforcement career before joining Flagler Beach.

He was arrested on a charge of aggravated assault in a domestic violence case in Illinois in 1981, but wasn't prosecuted.

Bobby worked in law enforcement for several agencies before landing in Flagler Beach, where he worked for nearly 13 years. The list includes the Parkland (Florida) Police Department where he resigned "by mutual agreement," according to his handwritten work applications for Bunnell and Flagler Beach, and the Seminole Police Department where he was "dismissed" from duty.

Kathy's longtime friend, Teresa Bonvoulier, told Detective Conrad that "Kathy has suffered injuries such as black eyes and bruises at the hand of Bobby" and had been on the telephone with her friend when she heard them fighting.

Bonvoulier told Conrad she had been at the MacDonalds' house to pick Kathy up to go shopping and heard Bobby screaming at her: "(Expletive deleted) if you don't come back I will hunt you down and kill you. I told you I could kill you and get away with it."

THE DAY OF THE SHOOTING

July 20, 2012

3:34 p.m. Bobby MacDonald calls Kathy and they talk for more than five minutes. It is the last of 26 calls that Kathy either made or received on that day.

5:50 p.m. Bobby MacDonald asks to leave work early, and heads toward his home in rural, western Flagler County.

6:33 p.m. Bobby MacDonald radios dispatch to report a fall at his home, but moments later asks to be met at a major intersection near his house.

6:40 p.m. Bobby MacDonald requests a law enforcement officer to meet him and the ambulance. He says a "routine" response would be fine.

6:41 p.m. Bobby MacDonald makes a two-minute phone call to his former police chief, Mike Plummer, who was working as a high-ranking officer with the investigating agency, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.

6:45 p.m. Bobby MacDonald makes a radio transmission to dispatch that Kathy MacDonald is "drunk and combative." Paramedics arrive on the scene.

7:00 p.m. Dispatch confirms a gunshot wound to the right temple. Kathy MacDonald is talking but is about to be intubated.

In his interview after the shooting with Sgt. Flach, Bobby said he left the house at 5:15 a.m. and that he spoke briefly with Kathy.

"I said good morning to her. She got up. She got a drink of water," he said. "I said, ‘Look, baby, I'm on my way to work, love you.' … And kissed her and out the door I went."

Bobby told Flach he worked his day "doing a bunch of different things," but only about three hours of his day were documented in work records.

Bobby said he didn't remember phone conversations with Kathy that day.

"I may have talked to her. I might not have," he told Flach. "I'm not gonna say. I don't remember."

He was busiest between 9 and 10:30 a.m. when he made four calls — two to Kathy and two to a Flagler County sheriff's number — according to work reports and cellphone records. He also spent three minutes taking a statement about an incident from the night before that had started in a local bar.

Bobby was on the phone again shortly after noon. He talked to dispatch for seven minutes around 1:30 p.m. about an incident that happened at the Flagler Pier the previous evening.

About 2:30 p.m., Bobby corresponded with dispatch about a man involved in the pier incident.

An hour later, at 3:34 p.m., he called Kathy and they talked for more than five minutes. It is the last call to or from Kathy's phone that day. She made or received 26 calls, including six incoming or outgoing calls with her husband. She also spoke to her friend Bertha Helms; Bobby's daughter Scott, several times; acquaintance Stanley Bruyette; and the call to her workplace.

Fellow Flagler Beach Officer Timothy Sturman told investigators that Bobby was back at the police department a few minutes before 5 p.m., though there was no notation in the dispatch report.

In the documents released by investigators, there was one witness who told investigators Bobby was much closer to home than his work the afternoon of the shooting.

Though Bobby told investigators he spent the day working, a bartender at the Bimini Bar on State Road 100 west — 8 minutes from the MacDonald home and 17 miles from Flagler Beach — told investigators she saw him in the bar that day in street clothes.

Detective Mark Linde interviewed Karen "Candi" Fite, a bartender at the Bimini Bar, on Oct. 9, 2012. Fite told him she saw Bobby in the bar "during the day" of the shooting. She said Bobby was not in uniform and met two other women there.

"She remembered it was that day because she remembered that the helicopter landed later that day to transport Kathryn," Linde reported. "A lady nicknamed ‘dirty Debbie' ran in the bar and told everyone that someone had been shot and that there was a helicopter landing."

Fite told investigators Bobby was "dressed ‘casual' and that he met two unknown women at the bar. One of the women paid the bar tab in cash."

In a June interview with The News-Journal, Fite said she dated Bobby's late brother, John, and is certain it was Bobby she saw. She said she has worked "on and off" at the bar for about 15 years and is also acquainted with Kathy, though their conversations were "typical bar small talk."

"He had two or maybe three drinks," Fite said of Bobby. "I think he was drinking beer. He was not intoxicated."

Fite said she did not know the two women but believed them to be "some sort of (family) relation."

Though not a regular at the Bimini Bar, Fite said Bobby "came in often enough."

State Attorney's Office records show the "pings" of Bobby 's cellphone and computer air card indicate that neither piece of equipment left Flagler Beach.

Police radios don't track an officer's whereabouts and Flagler Beach police cars were not equipped with global positioning systems, as was common with small police departments in 2012. The agency still does not use GPS on its patrol vehicles.

FIRST 15 MINUTES

"I know if my wife or loved one had been injured like this I'd have been upset, extremely upset. He seemed very cold." -- Paramedic Brady Barry

When Bobby says he arrived home from work and discovered Kathy, several things happened in the 15 minutes between Bobby's first call for help and when the OK was given for Kathy to be airlifted to a trauma center.

Bobby's second radio call was for rescuers to meet him in a parking lot at the intersection of county roads 302 and 305.

After making a phone call to a fellow officer, Bobby contacted dispatch again and asked that a law enforcement officer also meet them. He then made a call to his friend and former police chief Mike Plummer, who by then was a major for the investigating agency, the Flagler County Sheriff's Office.

At 6:45 p.m., paramedic Brady Barry and other emergency workers arrived in the parking lot to help Kathy. Barry was later questioned by sheriff's Detective Linde and said that the dispatch information was "extremely vague for what we normally receive."

"There was no sign of grief in his face, no crack in his voice. He wasn't excigted, he wasn't crying, he wasn't upset..." -- Paramedic Brady Barry

Barry told Linde that Kathy was "covered in blood and both of her eyes were swollen shut." He said that her appearance didn't fit "a simple fall." Because of the apparent severity of her head injury, Barry said he tried to come up with a legitimate reason to get clearance to bypass Florida Hospital Flagler and get Kathy to Halifax Health Medical Center's trauma team in Daytona Beach.

Barry said he asked Bobby "several times" what happened before he told them she was shot, according to Linde's report.

He then turned to Kathy, asking the four questions he poses to patients to help assess their level of head trauma.

"Who's the president of the United States?" Barry asked.

"Obama," she answered without hesitation.

"I asked her where she was," Barry told Linde.

"She said she thinks in a car," pretty good for someone with her eyes swollen shut, Barry remarked.

Then he asked who she was.

"She told me her first name," the paramedic said.

But the fourth question, What happened? brought a different response.

"I … I don't know," Kathy said.

""He pointed directly at the wound, which, as I said, that area had a lot of blood..."" -- Paramedic Brady Barry

Barry told Linde he asked a second time what happened and "Bobby MacDonald then reached up over the car door and (said), ‘She got shot. I think she shot herself.' "

Bobby then pointed to a spot on Kathy's head that was covered in blood. Barry wiped away the blood and saw the gunshot wound.

"Officer MacDonald pointed his finger approximately 2 inches from her head and directly at the hidden wound," Barry said.

The paramedic said Bobby's demeanor seemed cold, no raw emotion from someone whose wife was so badly hurt. He "was very reluctant to provide information," Barry said.

"There was no sign of grief in his face, no crack in his voice," the paramedic said. "He wasn't excited. He wasn't crying. He wasn't upset … He was just standing there calm, cool, (collected)."

Shooting's Aftermath

Back at the house on Cherry Lane, investigators saw signs of the traumatic injury just beyond the front door.

There was blood and a lot of it — a puddle on the floor a few feet from the front door, a blood-soaked couch beside it, smears of blood on walls and droplets on the floor of nearly every room in the house.

Bobby said he arrived at his west Flagler County home after a 12-hour patrol shift. He told investigators he didn't notice the blood until he was well inside and discovered his wife sitting on the floor next to the bathroom with a towel to her head.

"I'm gonna be honest, I don't remember whether I saw blood on the floor first," he told sheriff's Sgt. Flach during an interview that night. "I thought she might be laying on the couch, and I looked down, and then when I looked up, she's sitting there like that, and I go over to her, what's wrong, what's wrong, are you all right."

He told Flach twice that Kathy claimed the dog, a German shepherd that was crated when Bobby arrived home, jumped up and knocked her down. Bobby told dispatchers the same thing over the radio as he drove her to the site where she would be met by first responders.

But in his interview with Flach, he revealed that almost immediately after he saw her, he knew what had happened to Kathy.

"Well, I looked over, ‘cause I turned her head and I looked to see where the thing was and I saw the round hole here," Bobby told the sergeant of finding the gunshot wound to Kathy's head.

He then told Flach he walked over to the couch and "it's just a mass of blood." Bobby said he asked his wife where she fell.

"There was a like a gold pillow or a gold pillowcase on it, you could see where it was swirled," he said, referring to the smeared puddle on the floor. "I looked in the chair that was sitting there and there sat my snub nose."

He told investigators he grabbed the "snub-nose" — a .38-caliber, short-barreled revolver, one of a couple of handguns he kept in the house and in his personal car's console — "pulled out the empty brass" and "shut the cylinder, threw the three pieces of brass in the chair."

Bobby said he asked Kathy if she shot herself and she said, no, that the dog knocked her down. He said he asked her again.

"Now, I'm talking to her across the room. I open the gun up and I looked. I had one spent shell, one live round, two spent shells and whatever was left, I think it's a six-shooter, were live," he said.

After handling the gun, Bobby said he pulled "the truck," his sport utility police vehicle, up to the front of the house.

"And I threw her in the front seat and I'm on the radio to tell them this and that and I'm not gonna say anything, you know, that she shot herself, not in front of her — because I didn't need an argument," he told Flach.

"I love this woman with all my heart, body, mind and soul, you know," Bobby said. "I didn't see this coming."

But then Flach revealed to Bobby that investigators had evidence to back their suspicion of him. He asked Bobby point blank if he hurt his wife.

"Is there any reason you can think that she would have told two paramedics that you did it?" Flach asked.

"Did I what? Absolutely not," Bobby said. "I didn't touch her. I did not hurt her. No. No. I mean, I walked in the house and she was like that."

"How does that make you feel?" Flach asked, referring to Kathy's statement to paramedics.

"Pretty sick to my stomach," Bobby responded.

"Cause I've got two statements from two paramedics," Flach said.

"OK. I didn't do it, Flach," Bobby said. "The time, you do the timeline. You do anything. I did not hurt her. I did not do it."

"This is what I walked into. I told you the truth straight up. OK? And that's the truth," MacDonald said. "What she told the paramedics, I don't know, why she would tell them that. I don't know, but she was either intoxicated or high, but I would never hurt her."

TRYING TO FIND ANSWERS

With Bobby 's permission, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrived at the Cherry Lane house about 9 p.m. on the night of the shooting. They took hundreds of pictures and blood samples in addition to collecting the gun and shell casings. Simultaneously, Bobby was interviewed by Flach and Detective Annie Conrad. His uniform, boots and watch were also collected as evidence.

Ten days after the shooting, Bobby was surreptitiously recorded by State Attorney Investigator Gina Baker when the two met, at his request, at Manny's Restaurant in Flagler Beach. Bobby complained about the way the Flagler County Sheriff's Office handled the case, claiming that he was being "lied to" and that the hospital limited his access to Kathy for five days.

"I want this, this cloud lifted off of my head. I didn't do it," Bobby said at one point during the 2 1/2-hour meeting.

"I'm just going to talk like a cop for a minute," he told Baker. "The preponderance of evidence is totally not pointing to me."

Bobby told Baker he didn't wait at home for the ambulance because he was traumatized and just wanted to "close the distance."

"If I shot somebody, why would I let them crawl around, throw up, fall down, go in the bathroom?" he asked rhetorically, referring to the condition of the house.

It would be weeks before investigators returned to the home, but in the meantime FDLE learned the results of the gunshot residue kit taken from Bobby's hands were negative.

Between Aug. 1 and Sept. 3, 2012, investigators took statements from a variety of people who called into the Flagler County Sheriff's Office about the shooting, including friends of Kathy's, Bobby's ex-wife and his daughter, who was one of the last people to speak to Kathy.

Bobby's ex-wife Nancy Schneck told investigators she was married to Bobby from August 1974 to 1985.

Schneck reported in 1974 "he held a gun to her head" where they lived in Park Ridge, Illinois. Police responded and the gun was taken for a day, she said, in order for Bobby to "calm down for the night." He was also arrested in July 1981, for holding a knife to her throat, according to a police report.

Schneck told investigators that during their marriage Bobby "would drink routinely, get mad, and had pulled the spark plugs from her car depriving her of transportation."

On Aug. 2, 2012, Detective Conrad visited Kathy at Halifax Health and reported that she was unaware she is blind.

The next day, Mary Holmes, Kathy's mother, filed for an order of protection from Connecticut on behalf of her daughter. The order was later dropped.

Three weeks after the shooting, a search warrant was served. On Aug. 6, 2012, investigators returned to collect more evidence from the MacDonald home, notably the couch and pillows. They had been moved outside and were water soaked.

"I examined the pillow that was on the ground, under the couch, outside the home and observed a hole in the pillow that was consistent with a bullet passing through it," Detective Michael Miller wrote in his report.

Bullet fragments were surgically removed from Kathy's head on Aug. 14, 2012, when an infection developed three weeks after the shooting. It wasn't until Aug. 27 that the FDLE received the pillow collected on Aug. 6 from outside the MacDonalds' house.

"The pillow contains a hole in it from the bullet being fired through it into the victim's head," wrote Miller, who is now a corporal on patrol. "(FDLE's) Bill Spannhake advised that it might be possible to examine the pillow for the presence of lead residue that would be consistent with the bullet. … I realize that given the delay in collecting the pillow that some of the tests might not be possible."

Investigators spoke to Kathy's doctor on Sept. 24, 2012, and returned the next day but decided not to talk to her.

"It appeared Kathryn would be in a lucid state at times. However, she is confused at times as well," State Attorney Investigator Gina Baker reported.

Kathy, though confused at times, has told hospital staff, her ex-husband Butch Sanford and The News-Journal that Bobby shot her, in addition to her initial statements to paramedics.

A charge nurse in September 2012 told investigators Kathy said Bobby shot her.

During a brief interview with the News-Journal in January, Kathy said she remembers the day and that she saw Bobby and heard the gunshot.

"I thought I was on fire," she said. "I fell. I could smell blood."

On Dec. 5, 2012, Kathy was Baker Acted (involuntarily committed) by Dr. James Moore, who diagnosed her "with dementia secondary to a gunshot wound," describing a group of symptoms affecting intellectual and social abilities severely enough to interfere with daily functioning.

The medical opinions provided to law enforcement were that it would be unlikely Kathy could testify despite improvements, Flagler County Undersheriff Rick Staly said. In time, he said, she may be able to further assist in the investigation.

The investigation stagnated until April 13, 2013, when a timeline was generated by the State Attorney's Office. Between April and November 2013, DNA samples were resubmitted to FDLE.

QUESTIONS RAISED

The investigation was turned over from the Sheriff's Office to the State Attorney's Office in March of this year, and brought to the grand jury on April 5, 2014. The grand jury ruled there wasn't sufficient evidence to indict Bobby. State Attorney R.J. Larizza said the law prevents him from revealing any information about the grand jury and the case could still be prosecuted.

State Attorney's Office spokeswoman Shannon Peters said the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure require that any charge potentially punishable by death is to be brought to a grand jury by matter of course. Other cases that are not homicides but deemed to be "of great public importance," like this case, are also occasionally brought before the grand jury.

Peters said the agency doesn't keep statistics about how often cases are brought or whether they come back with indictments. She said it's happened a handful of times over the past five years.

In this case, the statute of limitations could be as little as three years to as much as no time limit, Larizza said.

Former State Attorney homicide investigator Shon McGuire said all shooting cases should be investigated as homicide.

"There is no scene that you can (immediately) say this is a suicide case," he said. "You have to treat everything as if it is a homicide to answer questions for the critics."

McGuire spent 38 years in law enforcement and the last 15 of that as a homicide investigator for the State Attorney's Office, eventually becoming head of the unit. He retired in 2011 but went on to a second career teaching police forces in war-torn countries, including Iraq. He said it would have been prudent to get a search warrant the night of the shooting, even though Bobby gave his permission for investigators to enter his house.

McGuire also said he would have likely collected the entire couch the night of the shooting. But FDLE spokesman Steve Arthur said it is "standard protocol to collect swabs from items at the crime scene in lieu of submitting the entire item itself."

"If the same information can be obtained from submitting a swab as opposed to submitting the item, this would be the approach taken," he said.

Professor Charles Rose, Stetson Law School evidence specialist, said the details surrounding the shooting of Kathy are the "perfect tough question" for law students.

"Sometimes justice is delayed," he said. "Absence of evidence is a hard sell to make. It's a very circumstantial case to make to a jury."
Kathy's survival, and current mental state, present another possible barrier to prosecution.

The "Hearsay Doctrine" limits the use of statements like the one Kathy made to paramedics, Rose said. And because investigators do not believe Kathy can testify, she can't retell to a jury what the paramedics say they heard her say the day she was shot. Prosecutors have to "overcome" reasons that disallow testimony, like if the person is unavailable or completely incapacitated.

"They allow statements (in court) if the person has died," Rose said. "There is a reason for that. If someone thinks they are dying, about to meet their maker, those statements are believed to be truthful."

Life After

Bobby MacDonald, 60, now lives near family in Greeneville, Tennessee, and receives an annual disability pension of $16,000, said Charlie Helm, who is on the Flagler Beach Police Pension Board. He was paid his regular annual salary of $38,702 during the 18 months he was on paid leave.

Bobby was invited to testify before the grand jury, but declined.

Helm said Bobby "easily" received disability, so easily that he suspects his health is failing. He declined to comment further.

Plummer, the former police chief who hired Bobby and is now also a retired law enforcement officer, gave a short interview recently at his Palm Coast home.

"Sure, he's my friend. I never thought he did it," Plummer said. "He was investigated for 18 months and they couldn't come up with anything."

Kathy MacDonald, 52, lives in Daytona Beach at Coastal Health and Rehabilitation Center. Social worker Linda Murphy, who had been handling Kathy's Social Security payments, is still in touch and said she is doing well.

"She's very reclusive," Murphy said. "She really doesn't want to talk to people. She's not the same person she used to be, unfortunately."

Murphy still checks in with Coastal Rehab and said the facility is taking "excellent care of her."

"When you have that kind of injury, it changes people," Murphy said. "With brain injuries, it takes a very long time."

Kathy is happy, Murphy said.

"She's finally starting to interact with other patients there," Murphy said. "It's taking her a long time. If she's happy and laughing, that's great."

Murphy has seen "viable improvement" in Kathy's condition.

"She didn't want anyone's help for a long time," Murphy said. "I think she's reclusive because she wants people to remember the way she used to be until she can be that person again."

Her lost vision aside, Murphy believes Kathy will regain her vivaciousness.

"It's my hope that slowly over time she will regain everything she lost," Murphy said.

If that happens, the Flagler County Sheriff's Office may continue its investigation.

"We will wait to see if the victim's medical status improves," sheriff's spokesman Cmdr. Bob Weber said in an email Thursday. "Or if additional information can be developed which we feel would be beneficial in this matter."